


He Wore A Shining Star

by Winter_of_our_Discontent



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Not Hunters, Characters Writing Fanfiction, Dean's not exactly human, F/F, Fandom Meta - Freeform, M/M, Multi, fanfic meta, gabe's casual blasphemy, inspired by a tumblr post, the slash sheriff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-23 22:47:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2558531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winter_of_our_Discontent/pseuds/Winter_of_our_Discontent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He's a myth, Gabriel," Cas said, for what felt like the umpteenth time. "There is no such thing as a Slash Sheriff."</p>
<p>"You say that now, bro," Gabe said, throwing a handful of M&Ms in his mouth and revealing the remains of the last handful, still half-chewed and brightly colored. "But then you are, late one night, hastily editing your Paper Legends Big Bang when suddenly..." he trailed off.</p>
<p>"Suddenly?" Cas asked, pushing up the glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. Unfortunately, giving in to Gabriel's penchant for drama was generally faster than trying to wait him out. A fact Gabriel was also willing to exploit.</p>
<p>"Suddenly he's there, behind you, over your shoulder, pointing out that your description of the sex scene is anatomically impossible and you've described Arthur as having at least four hands!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Slash Fiction

"He's a myth, Gabriel," Cas said, for what felt like the umpteenth time. "There is no such thing as a Slash Sheriff."

 

"You say that now, bro," Gabe said, throwing a handful of M&Ms in his mouth and revealing the remains of the last handful, still half-chewed and brightly colored. "But then you are, late one night, hastily editing your Paper Legends Big Bang when suddenly..." he trailed off.

 

"Suddenly?" Cas asked, pushing up the glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. Unfortunately, giving in to Gabriel's penchant for drama was generally faster than trying to wait him out. A fact Gabriel was also willing to exploit.

 

"Suddenly he's there, behind you, over your shoulder, pointing out that your description of the sex scene is anatomically impossible and you've described Arthur as having at least four hands!"

 

"A fact which, if you'll recall, I tried to tell you when you asked me to beta it earlier."

 

"No one likes a smartass beta."

 

"No one likes an inaccurate sex scene either."

 

"I've got several hundred gigs of porn on my hard drive that beg to differ."

 

"How are we even related?"

 

"I know," Gabriel said, emptying the rest of the candy into his mouth and balling up the wrapper, "It's gotta be tough knowing by the time they had you, all the good genes had been used." He threw it overhand at the trash can, where it hit the edge of the rim before falling in. "Score!"

 

Cas sighed; a beautiful, delicate combination of mouth shape and breath control that would have been instantly understood by any other younger sibling, has any others been present to hear it, as how on earth is he the older one.

 

"You should try writing sometime, see how the other half lives. Maybe then you'd be less of a stick in the mud about my stuff."

 

"I already beta for you and Charlie, in addition to the two classes I'm serving as TA for this semester. I have plenty on my plate already, especially if you're doing your usual spate of Big Bangs and exchanges."

 

"What can I say, the muses, they speak to me."

 

"In the immortal language of plot-what-plot, apparently."

 

"Hey, writing sex is hard," Gabriel paused. "Heh, hard. Anyway, you’re probably right, Cassie, you haven’t got the chops to actually write fic. Always a beta, never a… there’s an omegaverse joke in there someplace.”

 

Castiel had once had to beta, because of course both Gabe and Charlie never finished things until right before a deadline, chunks of a twenty-five thousand word omegaverse fic by Gabriel while alternating edits on Charlie’s twenty-two thousand word femmeslash omegaverse-deconstruction fic. The resulting narrative and metatextual discordance had given him a migraine lasting several days, as well as a number of dreams involving various characters arguing that he had done his utmost to forget afterwards.

 

Castiel took his glasses off briefly to rub at his temples. “I didn’t say I couldn’t write fanfiction, Gabriel, I said I didn’t have time.”

 

Gabriel could scent weakness the way sharks could sent blood in the water, with a sensitivity of approximately one part per billion. “So you do think you could write fanfic.”

 

“If AO3’s numbers are to be believed, thousands of people manage to do so every day.”

 

“So you’re saying you could write fanfic… but not as good as mine.”

 

If Castiel hadn’t been so tired, and Gabriel not so skilled at pushing his buttons, he probably wouldn’t have said what he said next. He would have calmly reiterated something about his workload and the abstracts he has due next week, or distracted Gabriel with an offer to walk to a nearby ice cream shop, his treat. Of course, it would have been a much shorter story if he’d done any of that, as narrative is primarily driven by conflict.

 

What Castiel said, instead, was, “As I am intimately familiar with your work, I’m reasonably certain I could write something at least as good. Likely with more plot and fewer unnecessary commas.”

 

“Oh, them’s fighting words.” Gabriel said, leaning forward and grinning with too many teeth. “I suppose you think you can write better sex scenes too.”

 

“While I don’t possess your precise...breadth of knowledge, I do have a grasp of basic human anatomy.”

 

“Oh it is ON, boyo-o,” Gabriel said, punctuating his words with finger jabs to Castiel’s chest. “It. Is. On.”

 

“Agreed.”

 

“So how’s this gonna work, then?” Gabriel said, sitting back on the couch and flexing his knuckles as though already imagining the words forming beneath his fingers. “We both have to write something.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And it’ll have to have a plot and be explicit, so it’s a fair comparison…” He waited for Castiel to nod in agreement, “and at least five thousand words.”

 

“Who’ll judge? Charlie?”

 

Gabe shook his head. “Nah, she knows us, it wouldn’t be unbiased enough. We’ll have to release them into the wilds of the internet, where we shall be at the mercy of the rapacious fandom hordes.” He waggled his eyebrows salaciously.

 

“But you already have subscribers and followers,” Cas pointed out. “You’d start out with an advantage in readers.”

 

“You’ll sign up for AO3, we’ll both post anonymously, with no promotion.”

 

“Fine. What pairing?”

 

“Merthur?”

 

“Sterek,” Cas countered.

 

“Stucky.”

 

“You know I ship Stony.”

 

“Johnlock?”

 

“Acceptable. So we’ll wait… a month, and at the end of it, the most popular fic as determined by AO3 stats wins?”

 

Gabriel reached a hand towards Cas and then withdrew it. “Wait, wait, wait, it’s not a wager without a prize.”

 

“What do you want if you win?”

 

“When I win, you’ll have to draw me the explicit fanart of my choosing and post it online under your username.”

 

“Gabriel, you know I can’t draw. They’ll be stick figures at best.”

 

“Exactly! Sticks with dicks. Possibly tentacles, haven’t decided yet. So go on, hit me with your ridiculous demand.”

 

“You’ll write G rated fic based on my prompt. And post it under your name.”

 

Gabriel winced. “You’re a ruthless man, Cassie.” He held a hand out. “Good thing it won’t matter ‘cause I am going to nail this harder than Jesus at Easter.”

 

“We’ll see about that,” Cas said, and shook his brother’s hand.

 

“Oh, and Cassie? Watch out for the Slash Sheriff.” Gabriel said, and winked.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Despite his earlier bravado while talking to Gabriel, Cas wasn’t entirely convinced he’d be able to write a story, let alone one good enough to win their contest. It was all well and good to have ideas -- he had a secret folder on his computer with bits of all the plots and dialogue he’d accrued over time -- but all of his attempts to actually do something with them had thus far been unsuccessful.

 

“Writing,” he admitted to Charlie over a latte, “is _difficult_.”

 

“There’s always a University AU,” Charlie suggested. “Or coffee shop. I mean, some things are classic for a reason, right? And it’d be writing what you know, Stone Cold Jane Austen-style.”

 

“Given that we are currently seated in a coffee shop and enrolled at a university, I think that may be a little too meta for my tastes.”

 

“Or casefic? It’s Johnlock, you can’t go wrong with casefic. Oooh, oooh, or genderswap!” Charlie said, bouncing slightly up and down in her chair. “The world always needs more genderswap.”

 

Castiel sighed and slumped forward, resting his head in his arms. “I should never have let him get to me. How the hell am I going to write five thousand words of porn with plot?”

 

Charlie sipped her chai thoughtfully. “Look, I’ve been writing fic since I first shipped me and Princess Leia, and I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Inspiration is a crock of shit.”

 

Cas cocked his head to the side slightly and looked up at her from the cradle of his arms.

 

“No, seriously. Trust me, I dated a creative writing MFA for a semester. You write. You just write. And maybe it’s crap and maybe it’s not, but you put one word in front of the other and worry about it later. If you’re waiting around for lightning to strike you you’ll be waiting a long time.” She patted him on the shoulder. “If it is crap, then I as your trusty beta and Queen will let you know. But it won’t be crap, okay?

 

“Just... think of a fic you’d like to read. Or heck, look on the kinkmeme, see if something strikes your fancy. And write it. And you can bounce ideas off of me, and I’ll edit it when you’re done, and with my help you’ll kick Gabriel’s sorry behind and make him write something so G rated people will read it to their kids at bedtime. Kay?”

 

“Alright.”

 

Charlie held out her fist and Castiel dutifully bumped it with his own.

 

“And one last piece of advice; maybe you should go out and try to get some inspiration for the sex scenes the old fashioned way.” Charlie said, and winked.

 

“Porn?”

 

Charlie stuck her tongue out at him. “Funny. Ha. No. Go have one of those meaningless casual hook-ups that the media keeps telling me we’re all having.”

 

Cas opened his mouth---

 

“And NO hook-ups with exes. None. You cannot be friends with benefits with exes, they are neither friendly nor beneficial.”

 

\---Cas closed his mouth.

 

“Seriously, if the other options are texting Balthazar for a ‘shag,’ or saying yes to that one creepy dude in the quad, watch as much porn as you want.”

 

“You’re too kind.”

 

“I’m sure Gabe can loan you some,” Charlie added far too cheerily.

 

“I will destroy you.”

 

“Save it for the LARP, handmaiden.”

  
  


***

 

The single, solitary up side to that ridiculous bet, Cas decided as he sat in bed later that night, was the fact that it gave him a terrifically effective way to stall on writing the term papers he should have been working on. For instance, the browser tabs open to the Sherlock kinkmeme, Ao3, wikipedia, fanlore.org, and Tumblr all currently counted as research.

 

Cas glanced around his room, just in case he had at some point hung up a poster of brilliant plot ideas next to his wall calendar of National Parks and then completely forgotten about it.

 

No such luck.

 

He eyed his bookcase. _Paradise Lost_ , _the Divine Comedy_ , _Complete Works of Shakespeare_... His eyes lingered on the plastic figure of Spock, given to him by Charlie. He still wasn’t sure if it was meant as an insult or a compliment. _The Gay Sex for Dummies_ next to it, a gift from Gabriel, he had no such doubts about.

 

Eventually even this stalling wasn’t quite distracting enough, and he decided to stall on the stalling, typing “slash sheriff” into the Tumblr search box. Not unexpectedly, there were a number of entries and one Tumblr devoted entirely to stories of ‘sightings’.

 

There was an odd lack of commonality to the stories; he’d have imagined a group of ‘encounters’ emanating from an original urban legend would have shared far more of their narrative DNA. Each story featured a writer toiling alone (examples of what they were toiling on, when provided, were often enough to make Cas’ inner beta, or sometimes outer queer, wince) who was then interrupted by the sudden and unexplained appearance of a person dressed in stereotypical cowboy duds. The Sheriff usually explained the problems in the author’s story and disappeared as suddenly as they’d appeared, once they’d finished giving suggestions, feedback, or, occasionally, insults on the work. But the details themselves varied greatly, from the gender or agender of the Sheriff to their physical description and mannerisms. The Sheriff was tall, the Sheriff was ridiculously tall, the Sheriff was short, the Sheriff had blonde, brunette, grey, black, or purple hair. Only the six-pointed star pinned to their chest and the cowboy boots remained constant.

 

Apparently there were almost as many headcanons for the Slash Sheriff as there were for Cecil Palmer, though with fewer tentacles or extra eyes.

 

...no, wait, he’d apparently thought that too soon. And with fanart, no less.

 

Castiel would never fail to be impressed by the sheer creativity of fandom. And every so often, a bit terrified of it.

 

He closed the tab. He closed the laptop, carefully placing it next to him on the nightstand.

 

As he fell asleep, he imagined he heard the jangling of spurs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thanks for sticking around for chapter two. The story's completely plotted and partially written (and so meta it's painful), so it shouldn't be nearly as long before I post three. Have fun spotting all the references!


	3. Chapter 3

Cas found himself far too busy with classwork and grading to so much as think about fic for the next week.

Too busy to think about writing fic, anyway. He still found time to sneak in reading a chapter whenever one of his AO3 subscriptions updated. He was, after all, only human.

He couldn’t stall forever, though, especially when Gabe was making a point of telling him the word count on his own fic at least twice daily. He’d once done it while Castiel was in the shower, throwing open the bathroom door and sticking his head in just long enough to yell a number at Cas before slamming it shut again. Cas had started compulsively locking the door after that.

Finally he found himself sitting in bed, laptop in his lap, struggling to get Sherlock and John into bed. Not his bed. John’s bed. With each other. They talked, they bantered, they clearly cared for each other in a generally canonical fashion, but he couldn’t get them to shut up and kiss already.

Cas made a noise of frustration that could have been transcribed by allowing a cat to walk across a keyboard.

“Fuck it,” Cas grumbled, poking at the keys. At this point they could fuck dry with no stretching doggie style while somehow also still staring into each other’s cerulean orbs for all he cared.

“Afraid I can’t let you do that, pardner.”

Cas let out a manly noise that was in no way a yelp as he scrambled backwards, hitting his back against the Ikea headboard. “Who the hell are you, why are you in my room, and why are you wearing a blanket and a cowboy hat?” he growled, looking up at the man now standing at the foot of his bed.

“It’s a serape, amigo,” the man said, his voice deep and slightly rough.

“Looks more like a blanket.”

The man huffed in annoyance, muttering something about ‘authenticity.’ He pulled the blanket over his head in a practiced motion before tossing it on the floor. “Fine. Better?”

Castiel looked him up and down very slowly, starting at the man’s cowboy boots and working up past his muscular legs, slightly bowed, to the large belt buckle, the fitted vest decorated with a silver star, the fine line of his jaw, his cupid bow lips, his brilliant green eyes, and ending at the worn cowboy hat. “It’s a start.”

“I’m the Slash Sheriff.”

“Did Gabriel put you up to this?”

“Up to what?” the man said, a look of seemingly honest confusion in his deep green eyes. Cas wasn’t sure if he was angrier at Gabriel for having arranged this prank, or for knowing someone this attractive and not having introduced him to Cas sooner. Of course, if he was willing to go along with showing up in someone’s room uninvited for a prank he was probably an assbutt. Wait, no, he should definitely not be thinking about the man’s ass, no matter how nice it undoubtedly was. Even if he’d now accepted this individual for his personal Slash Sheriff headcanon as well as future private sexual fantasies.

Cas sighed. “Pretending to be the Slash Sheriff.”

The man snorted. “That idjit? Paid him a visit a time or two, can’t always keep track of where the hands are in his sex scenes.”

“Oh God, I know, I’ve told him, use a chart if you need to…” Cas smiled, and looked up to see the man grinning as well. The expression made him look even more gorgeous, his eyes sparkling, laugh lines creasing in the corners.

“Alright, I’ll humor you,” Cas said, because anything that would keep this man smiling was worth doing. “Tell me something you’d only know if you were actually the ‘Slash Sheriff’,” he said, making air quotes around the phrase.

The man looked thoughtful. “Your first ‘ship was Frodo and Sam but book, not movies, which you still haven’t seen. Weirdo. You wrote an alternate ending where they meet up again in the Undying Lands, but you tore it up ‘fore anyone could read it. Green notebook, college ruled, blue ballpoint pen.”

Castiel opened his mouth, then closed it. He repeated this action once more, mind racing to think of some way, any way, for Gabriel to have known that, for anyone else to have known that.

“That’s it,” he said. “I must be dreaming.”

“Ain’t that a bit of an overused trope?” the man said, winking at Cas as he took a step closer, and dear god, yes, he was definitely bow-legged. And those worn brown leather chaps really showed off the curves of said legs.

“The alternative scenario,” Cas said, throat feeling a bit dry, “is that I’m laying in my bed in the middle of the night arguing about transformative fanworks with an exceptionally handsome man dressed as a cowboy.”

“Sheriff,” the man said, gesturing to the gleaming six pointed star pinned to his shirt. “Told you, Slash _Sheriff_.”

“Sheriff. So either I’m asleep, my life has slipped straight into magical realism, or I’ve gone insane.”

“ ‘preciate your use of the Oxford comma there, pardner.”

Cas, for lack of anything better to do, removed and polished his glasses on his shirt. “I’ll be honest, I’m starting to lean towards the last one.”

The stranger looked hurt for a moment, then indignant.

“Hey, there’s no call for that! Saving authors, fixing smut, the family business. ‘s a lady in Peoria right now fixin’ to use Greek yogurt as lube, and yet here I am trying to help you! You should show me some damn respect!”

“Respect is earned, _partner_.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” They glared at each other.

“Fine,” the stranger said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “You fixin’ to write a fic?”

Cas sighed and finally looked away. “I made an unwise bet with Gabriel.”

“Ah. Alright, how ‘bout this? I’ll help you kick his ass.”

“You’d do that?” Cas said, hopeful in spite of himself. He still had no idea what to make of the stranger, but right now he’d’ve gone out to a crossroads at midnight if it meant beating Gabe.

Also, the man was easily the most attractive person he’d ever laid eyes on, which didn’t hurt. Hello, newly discovered cowboy kink and sudden desire to write a Western AU.

The Sheriff...and okay, Cas was starting to think of him as the Sheriff… he was also continuing to think of him naked... smirked. “Kinda in the job description, sweetheart.” He cracked his knuckles ostentatiously, the sound absurdly loud in the small room. “Now buck over an’ let’s get to work.”

And it was more than a little ridiculous, sitting on his bed next to a stranger dressed as a cowboy discussing the finer points of a Johnlock casefic, Cas’ typing vainly trying to keep up with the speed of their thoughts.

But it worked. Cas wrote. And the Sheriff seemed to be able to almost preternaturally sense-- or maybe actually preternaturally sense-- when Cas was about to get stuck, asking a question or pointing something out that pushed him back on the right track.

The words weren’t the only things flowing; every time Cas angled his screen towards the Sheriff to let him read, or the Sheriff leaned over to point out something, their bodies ended up closer until by two am their sides were pressed against each other, the Sheriff’s arm slung casually around Cas’s shoulders where it wouldn’t interfere with his typing. His body was just on the right side of too warm where it met Castiel’s, and when he leaned in it was all Cas could do to not bury his nose in the man’s neck and lick and bite at the smell of leather and some kind of smoky, woodsy scent.

He was incredibly grateful that the laptop hid one of the other effects of the Sheriff’s proximity, especially once he started writing the first sex scene.

“So… you reckon that position’s physically possible?” the Sheriff asked, sounding curious.

Castiel shrugged slightly, careful not to dislodge the Sheriff’s arm. “I managed it with my last boyfriend.”

“That so?”

“It’s amazing what a half decade of yoga can do for your flexibility.”

They stared at each other.

“Of course, it depends partially on the respective heights of the participants,” Castiel added.

“...that so?” the Sheriff said, thoughtful. “So, say, they’re… six feet tall without their boots on an’ maybe, say…”

“Five eleven,” Cas blurted.

The sheriff’s tongue darted out to lick at his lip. “Yeah, that. Just for example.”

“I could… show you.” Cas added quickly, before he lost his nerve. “I expect it might be useful for you to know, in your line of business.”

“Yeah… yeah. I reckon that’d be…. real useful,” the man agreed.

Another moment passed. Neither took their eyes off the other.

“Fade to black?” Cas said, closing the laptop and setting it on his nightstand.

“Thought you’d never ask,” the Sheriff said, throwing his hat to the side and lunging forward.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, for your comments, replies, subscriptions, and Kudos. It means a lot.

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty much super-meta-fandom-crack, based on this tumblr post: http://tarteauxfraises.tumblr.com/post/54808441499 and dedicated to reluctantabandon, who made the mistake of saying "I SMELL AN AU" when I sent it to her. This is all your fault. 
> 
> Character opinions and 'ships mentioned do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
> 
> This is a WIP and while I do finish them eventually I cannot guarantee a schedule for updates. Caveat lector.
> 
> You can follow me on tumblr at [bamfinacuddlyjumper](http://bamfinacuddlyjumper.tumblr.com)


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